Between
by RowanDarkstar
Summary: She was a hero today. Missing Scene and post-ep to "Kansas". Outlaw Queen.


**DISCLAIMER:** "Once Upon a Time" and all its wonderful characters belong to ABC and Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, etc.. I borrow them only with love.  
**TIMELINE:** Missing scene and post-ep to "Kansas"

**BETWEEN  
**by  
Rowan Darkstar  
Copyright (c) 2014

The wind is uncomfortably biting, and Regina finds herself longing for the slow-coming spring. For some time now she has been secretly feeling true warmth would never return to Storybrooke. Not as long as Henry gazed through her like a cut-glass window ornament.

She is unaccustomed to someone keeping step with her as she walks. It has been a while since her mother's radar kept close tabs on every movement of a figure beside her. Henry was so distractible as a young child, oblivious to passing cars whenever something caught his fancy. She learned to feel his trajectory like a heat missile in her wake, reaching out blindly and catching his hand with almost uncanny accuracy. _(She pretends she did not do the same for young Snow and carriages, ignores that just two weeks ago she threw a hand out to stop the woman's pregnant belly from advancing too close in front of an oncoming truck.)_

But though she still watches Henry with a protective mother's eye, the boy has learned to guard himself against the larger hazards, and she has learned to give some slack to the leash.

Amongst the adults, it has been many years since any footsteps beside hers did not make deliberate efforts to vary their path from her own.

Her new shadow gives her pause. Robin is not outwardly demonstrative in public. A hand on her back here, a touch to her forearm there. Nothing more. She has never said aloud that she would prefer to keep their expressions of affection away from prying eyes, but he reads her body language like no other, and it took him no time at all to understand that Regina Mills needs to maintain the regality inherent in the title of mayor. Nor that she would not lay herself so vulnerable in front of her former challengers. But he shadows her nonetheless, moving instinctively with her like birds veering and turning in formation, and she knows he catches her sometimes when she looks sideways at him with her brow tucked in confusion, because this is all still so new and painfully comfortable.

Today she is grateful for his persistent nearness. Because they are all, the whole lot of rag tag heroes she almost thinks of as her family, they are counting on her to face down her sister, and Regina is all but certain this is puff and bravado and she is going to get her royal ass kicked one last time. Zelena scares the hell out of Regina and she is bruised and aching from their last encounter.

They walk in silence across the open field toward the barn that gives off magic like steam into twilight. She listens to the familiar huffs of breath from the bodies around her, knowing she would recognize any of them in the dark. Regina has more skills for wilderness and hand-to-hand survival than most give her credit for. She can mount a horse with nothing but a running start and a fistful of mane, she can climb trees as well as Snow if the need should arise, and she catches flying arrows far better than her step-daughter ever could. She is ignoring the knot in her stomach because if there is anything Regina knows how to do, it is drown her fears and doubts and deepest hurts while she stands and fights the necessary fight.

They are within shouting distance of the barn, when Robin says, "Wait," and catches her arm in a hard grasp.

Regina nearly stumbles as she spins and finds her balance with a hard step toward Robin. His hand holds her solid, and before she can catch his eyes with the obvious question, he tugs her against him and kisses her with a wild emotion that shimmers down her throat and through her guts with dizzying heat and fear and pleasure wrapped in an uncontrollable tangle.

When he pulls back, the rush is overwhelming and she can only stand and catch her breath, lips parted and damp and body all too aware of Robin's proximity. She knows the others have stopped and are staring, but she cannot tear her eyes from Robin's. His gaze is pouring strength into her like water.

He stays close, bow held away to his side, free hand on the back of her neck, and in the breathless intensity, he says to her, "Feel that, when you face her. Because _that_...," his hand shakes her a bit at the back of her neck, matching the power in his words, "_that_...is light magic."

Regina can only breathe. But there is a trace of a smile in her huffed exhale.

She is peripherally aware of the eyes locked on them and somewhere in her subconscious she hears the involuntary gasp rush across Emma's lips and the charged exhale from David's gaping mouth. She knows they are realizing that she is flesh, blood and pain, that she is breakable, that Robin is not a play thing, not another sex slave, not a pleasant distraction. He has reached through to wrap his hold around her stolen heart as surely as if he had been the one to plunge his fingers into her chest. But she cannot bring herself to raise her defenses against the exposure. Zelena has to be stopped and her step-grandson needs to be saved, and if she has half a prayer of doing any of this she has to keep looking in Robin's eyes and keep believing in herself with the vehemence of pride she feels in his gaze.

If this is light magic, she never wants to let go.

She manages a soft nod. "All right," she whispers, and she turns back toward the barn.

"You did it, milady. I never doubted that you could." The small smirking smile is charming and sincerely proud and just that little bit arrogant that has her daring to think maybe this man has a chance of keeping up with her in the chaos that is her life. That is her mind.

She wants to flash him a sidewise grin and toss her trademark snark back at him like she has become so comfortable doing in recent days, but all of the sudden she cannot find her strength.

She is lying on her back, on her own bed. This is new territory for them. She is here simply because she was damned exhausted by the time she left Zelena in the holding cell and made her way back to her house. Robin insisted, in a tone that brooked no argument, that she retire to her room for a rest before dinner. She let him lead her, and now she lay stretched at the edge of her bed, Robin seated beside her as she so often was for Henry.

He sees the shift of emotion in her before she is able to make sense of it herself, and she watches her internal turmoil reflected in the crease of his brow. His hand moves out and his thumb smoothes steadily over the tense muscles beneath her left eye.

"What is it?" he whispers.

The gentleness breaks her. It's too much. She has her heart back, and in its absence she has endured the ongoing loss of her son, regained his bright eyes and innocent love, broken a curse, and...and..opened herself...to this man in front of her. His tender touch, his kind smile...and the possibility...the inconceivable possibility...of..._happiness_... The emotion rushes through her tenfold and unbridled and she is out of practice in all of this.

"_Regina..._" The whisper is like gentle fingers down the thinnest skin of her midriff and she knows she is crying because she can feel the heat on her skin, but she doesn't have the energy for more than a half-hearted nod toward turning away.

She swallows hard and lets Robin stroke a comforting hand down her exposed throat.

She watches him draw a slow breath, thoughts spinning behind his sharp and clever eyes, coloring the lines of his frown. He rests an open hand on her chest. "You were a hero today," he says, words weighted like the comforting pressure of his touch.

He told her not 24 hours ago, told her what she had needed so desperately to hear, what she had pressed him for. _"What do you see in me?" "...a second chance."_ Beautiful sentiment, but not enough. She needed to know. Why would anyone love the Evil Queen? And she broke through, they talked for more than an hour, and somehow, inexplicably, miraculously, he understood. He spoke her own emotions even as they rose to her lips. The hate, the anger that had defined her life, become her lifeline and her means of survival. The depth of her pain, the curse of the lonely.

He told her to look at how far she had come, to take the true measure of her nature. He called her the most resilient. Like Belle. Like Snow.

"My hero," he whispers now when she does not reply.

Her tongue slips over her lips, tasting the last traces of crimson lip gloss, and she finds herself wishing randomly that Henry were safe in his room down the hall, because it's been so long...so long... "...and what if I don't stay this way?" she says. "What if I can't hold on to the light? What if I go back to being the Evil Queen?"

Robin's breath puffs out through his nose and there is a focused determination in his movements that suddenly has her seeing him on a battlefield, leading his men into life or death for a cause in which he believes to his very marrow. Regina's stomach flips, as Robin sinks to his knees, brings his face up close to her own, and tangles his calloused fingers into her scrambled hair. She can taste his breath as he speaks with a force that scares her. "Then I will grab you by your hair, press you up against that wall, hold you there by your wrists, and with my face inches from your own I will ask you-_Where does it hurt_?"

The room goes still.

Regina lets go her stifled breath on an incredulous scoff that merges into a wretched sob. Then before she can think, before she can rein in her newly unguarded heart, she pulls him with a clinging hand at the back of his neck, kisses him, grasps at his lapels, bares her soul to him through lips and tongue and flesh. It is long moments later, when they part by inches, that the awareness of their compromising position sinks into her skin. They have never been in a place quite like this before, her sprawled on her back, in her very own bed, so much of his body in contact with hers, her defenses fallen and her emotions untamed. Her heart races like a fluttering school girl's.

Once again, he reads the thoughts on her face. His touch is contrastingly gentle against their wild passion as he smoothes an errant strand from her cheek. "It's all right," he whispers. "Not tonight. Tonight you rest, regain your strength." Then with a smirk, he adds, "I intend to sap that strength quite pleasurably in the very near future."

His boldness surprises her. It is how he shoved his way past her defenses with hardly a fight. It is how she accidentally spilled her heart to him. How she accidentally fell in love.

"You presume a great deal, thief."

He nods with that winning smile she loves and dreads in equal measure, and she remembers now all those months in the castle of wanting to wipe that smirk off his face with a fireball and wanting to coax it out of him with her charms, both impulses spaced in equal measure, like a warring pendulum in her head. "I presume you will adore me," he says. "I simply won't go away until you do."

She tries for levity, but her voice deepens against her will. "You won't go away if I do?" she asks, and she sounds like Henry after a late night bad dream.

Robin's concern is visceral and he cradles a hand to her cheek, shakes his head, and touches his forehead to hers as her tears betray her. "Never," he whispers.

But she can feel it. A storm brewing in the distance. This is supposed to be the peace after the battle, but the cloud has not yet passed. Not for her, anyway. Something is coming.

"Sssshhh," Robin whispers. "Get some rest. I believe you promised Roland some ice cream later on."

She nods and can't stop a smile. The boy is so beautiful, so innocent, so kind. She will push it away, this encroaching darkness. There is love here. There is light. Love saved a child today. And she will cling to these moments, like stars in the black sky.

"Sundaes at home tonight," she whispers. "Granny's tomorrow."

Before long, she sleeps.


End file.
